Economist magazine cover image from December 2003:

This lengthy post is not meant to be a race baiting attempt, even though that is exactly what the title and content suggest.  Moreover, while most people probably take the phrase “more evolved” to be complimentary (and indicative of higher intelligence among other desirable characteristics) and take the phrase “less evolved” to be insulting, I am not sure we can say that with any certainty at all.

What if so called “more evolved” humans destroy earth in the coming years via nuclear wars, environmental destruction, newer chemical/ biological/nanomaterial/gene based weapons, low birth rate/negative population growth related self-destruction and so on? Can we even say that something is more evolved than something else without knowing for certain the definition of more evolved?

From thecupidscousin blog:

In any case, going back to the subject matter of this post, I used to have a caucasian workmate some years ago who told me many times that he thought Asians were the most evolved of all human races. By Asian, he (and I) meant mongoloid Asians, which includes Chinese, Japanese, Korean (along with the diaspora of these groups across the world).

My ex-workmate’s definition (with some minor additions on my part that I am sure he would agree with) of “more evolved humans” includes among many other characteristics: generally peaceful daily behavior; emotional outburst control; less crime and homicides; cleanliness; delayed gratification; lack of religiosity; high IQ; herbivore men; extensive use of technology, often in unusual socially frowned upon ways in less evolved societies (e.g., boyfriend arm pillows, hi-tech toilets, robot companions, fembots/sexbots); high rates of asexuality; liberal attitudes and self-control in the presence of scantily clad women; sizable segments of the population practicing extreme forms of isolationist antisocial behavior; death from playing video games; low birth rates; and limited to no body hair.  Recently, another friend of mine raised this same issue, and I was reminded about my ex-workmate’s argument and decided to subsequently write this post.

I find this whole concept very interesting, and I agree with many parts of it.  I also think that much of the “less evolved” world is headed in this direction (i.e., we are evolving into Asia in many respects, with homicides falling globally, virtual lives increasingly important, men becoming more feminine/less savage, religiosity decreasing, technology becoming highly addictive and omnipresent, birth rates falling globally, and isolationism increasing in spite of people having many online friends).

However, lack of daily violent confrontations does not necessarily correlate with lack of major genocidal violence potential, and it is quite possible that China will go to war with some of its Asian neighbors in the coming years even though you would never get that idea from seeing daily largely very peaceful life throughout Asia.

Animal cruelty in Asia is also astounding and the region dominates world demand for shark fin soup, tiger bones, ivory and much more. I think that more evolved human societies will have a much larger proportion of the population being some combination of vegan, vegetarian and synthetic lab grown meat eaters.  Animal rights will continue to become increasingly important as more countries deem animal to be sentient beings.  It is also highly debatable whether higher IQs and test scores in the Asian world are more important for a society to thrive compared to much higher rates of creativity and invention in the western world (at least historically speaking).

I think that a more evolved society will entail significant behavioral elements of both modern Asian (especially Japanese) and, to a lesser extent, Northern European peoples and societies.  Both of these groups of people are often accused of having less emotional and outburst prone people.  In terms of racial diversity, I think that Northern European based societies are more evolved and fairer than Asian societies.

It is interesting to note that Native Americans, with similar genetics to mongoloid Asians, have vastly different behavioral patterns and cultures. This would seem to favor “nurture” in the “nature” versus “nurture” debate and make the subject of this whole post (related to genetics and stereotypes) a moot point, but perhaps native Americans are not as genetically similar to say the Chinese or Japanese as we think?

The part of this whole theory of my ironically very hirsute (excess body hair) caucasian ex-workmate that interests me the most is the lack of body hair in Asians phenomenon.  Over the years, I have noticed that people with a lot of body hair (especially back hair and chest/stomach/ abdomen area hair) tend to go bald much faster and more extensively than people with less to no body hair.  Asians and Native Americans in general tend to have less to no body hair, and in my opinion, less extensive balding patterns.  So is the book “The Naked Ape” more applicable to Asians than to the other major races that still have a lot of body hair?

To end this somewhat rambling post, here is a video that shows that even Asians can sometimes surprise you when it comes to body hair quantity: